Talk:Edward Irham Cole

Requested move 18 November 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Page moved. Technically, this move request essentially reverts a cut-and-paste move performed in December 2014, which, in effect, I shall be requesting a history merge shortly after closing this discussion. (non-admin closure) Steel1943  (talk) 08:12, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

E. I. Cole → E. J. Cole – Although subject's full name was Edward Irham Cole, his professional name was E. J. Cole, not E. I. Cole, according to these references, which indicate his name as Edwin J. Cole. The 42 contemporary publication inline cites appended to the article, however, refer to subject as E. I. Cole, suggesting the existence of two separate individuals, one named E. I. Cole and the other E. J. Cole. The most likely possibility is that it is the same individual known by and using somewhat different names. IMDb lists him as E.J. Cole, with no indication at the bottom of his entry specifying that his alternative professional name was E.I. Cole, while the BFI does not appear to have a listing for either form of the name. Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 01:22, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support move. He professionally used the name E. J. Cole.  ONR  (talk)  06:46, 18 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Article name change proposal
Requested move (attention: User:Steel1943):

This article should not be named "E. J. Cole". The man's name was Edward Irham Cole and there are plenty of references to E. I. Cole in his professional capacity as a theatrical entrepreneur and film director in contemporary newspaper reports during his life and career. Searches on Trove gives 3,937 hits for "e. j. cole" and 3,855 hits for "e. i. cole". The problem with this simple comparison is that a large number of the hits for "e. j. cole" relate to people other than Edward Irham Cole. More focussed Trove searches give more meaningful results. Combined with the word "dramatic" a Trove search gives 287 hits for "e. j. cole" and 1,633 hits for "e. i. cole". Combined with the word "theatre" a Trove search gives 547 hits for "e. j. cole" and 2,339 hits for "e. i. cole". Combined with the word "bohemian" a Trove search gives 185 hits for "e. j. cole" and 1,152 hits for "e. i. cole".

User:Roman Spinner and User:Old Naval Rooftops use the NFSA webpage and IMBd webpage to justify the claim that Edward Irham Cole's professional name was E. J. Cole. These are rudimentary and unreferenced webpages (also the NFSA website names him as Edwin rather than Edward, casting further doubt on it's value as an authoritative reference). I would counter those with the well-written and extensively referenced A Cultural History of the Bushranger Legend in Theatres and Cinemas, 1828-2017 by Andrew James Couzens (2019), especially Chapter 4: 'Hippodramas and Edward Irham Cole'. That chapter has 17 instances of "E. I. Cole" and zero instances of "E. J. Cole". See also 'Time Marches On from Redskins to Bare Skins' (one of many such articles from Trove).

I strongly suspect the confusion regarding his name in the Trove newspaper articles naming him as 'E. J. Cole' derive from handwritten reports, with the typesetter mistaking an "I" for a "J" (see the similarity of these two letters in this  Edwardian Script example). This has been an age-old problem (see: The Mistaken J).

I would argue I have provided enough evidence that Edward Irham Cole's professional name was E. I. Cole and that the article should either be renamed "Edward Irham Cole" (my preference) or "E. I. Cole". Ikeshut2 (talk) 12:34, 3 January 2023 (UTC)